Tangential Tendencies

TGS Rundown Part 1

Another year gone by, the Tokyo Game Show has come and gone with its series of announcements, surprises, and disappointments. I'll do my best to rundown all my impressions, albeit through relayed media and others' impressions.

White Knight Story - This is definitely a game that I fell for the moment I watched its initial unveiling back at last year's E3. Since then, we've been peppered with various pieces of beautiful concept art, a full-length story trailer, and the promise that the game would be playable at TGS. The game was fully unveiled this year, and I could not be more excited about it. The battle system plays out in what seems like a fusion of FFXII's free-roaming fields and battles, but instead of a delay-based MMO-style combat, the game takes elements of PSO's real time combos and infuses them with Radiata Stories' customization. Additionally, it never fails to amuse me that the game features a character creation system that rivals just about any MMO out there. How the game's online elements come into play is one more piece of the puzzle that has yet to be unveiled, and something that I'm anxiously anticipating.

Metal Gear Solid 4 + MGO - There's honestly not much to be said that hasn't already been discussed at length, especially on this week's 1UP Show and 1UP Yours. Both games have an intense buzz that gets me really excited, since I've always been a fan of MGS... despite never beating any of them due to my sheer lack of skill playing them. I really aught to go back and take another stab at them before 4 comes out next year.

Valkyrie of the Battlefield - This game came out of nowhere for me, and like WKS became an instant interest once I saw its unveiling trailer and several gameplay videos. The visuals are just stunning, and almost remind me of the tech utilized for the flop Unlimited SaGa's CG cutscenes, yet in full real time goodness. One thing that gets me even more excited is that the game is being developed by the charred remnants of SEGA's Overworks team, the talented folks that put together Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast. And joining the cast is also Hitoshi Sakimoto for what seems to be his umpteenth score this year. There's huge evidence of the guy spreading himself a bit thin, considering that one of the in-game tracks sounds nearly identical to a piece in FFXII... But even still, I look forward to his efforts for this game. It just disappoints me a bit when he isn't putting a full unique spin on each project.

In Part 2, which I'll hopefully write up later this week, I'll reflect on more of the TGS games and media... As well as give some reports on other music I've been listening to as well as writing.

The Past, Made New

As autumn gradually approaches, the seasons of nostalgia begin for me. While Spring and Summer are often about progression and moving forward, Autumn and Winter tend to bring out my memories and fond recollections of past times whether good or bad. Often times, there's triggers for these memories. It could be smelling or feeling a certain chill start to waft in the air, or the lack of sunlight in the evenings. It could also be hearing certain music, or playing a certain game. Regardless it feeds on our longing for how things used to be, and in a time where so much has changed from one year to the next, it affects me particularly strong.

Everyone has their own story about playing FFVII, whether it was their first RPG, an anticipated one amongst a middling collection, whether they simply enjoyed it or thought it was the best thing ever. Despite popular acclaim, despite controversy, despite recent milking; it's an influential game. Anything associated with it brings me back 10 years to when it was released in the winter of '97. I had a particularly comfortable wicker chair in my room at the time, right in front of my TV, that I would always curl up in to play games. I remember the creak of it at 1 or 2 AM when I should have been asleep but just kept on playing anyway, recklessly hacking my way through the battle system I didn't fully comprehend at the time.

While I got my start on gaming on the NES, these days of the PSX RPGs were really what defined it for me. FF7, 8, Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, among many others. It was a time before the constant hype on the internet, reading copious other opinions besides my own and friends'. All current news was limited to whatever magazines were glanced at within a month's time, and print ads actually meant something. It was possible to be surprised by something coming out of nowhere and shaking the foundation of the industry.

Too many things are taken for granted these days, what with copious interviews, previews, constant chatter and hype from both fans and journalists and fellow developers. Sales, press conferences, NPD numbers, review scores. In my personal golden age of gaming, I didn't care what a game scored. I didn't care what games sold the most copies. It was just about the love of gaming, and owning one system or another didn't seem to matter quite as much. Enjoying one system didn't seem to be such an obscure point of view.

Granted, that's just my perspective on things since I never was a part of this wide gaming community until the past few years. While community definitely brings us all further together, there are lot of interesting ups and downs that come along with it. I can't say whether either way is preferred, but the differences are there and it's impossible to go back.

Weekly Gaming: Enter the PSP

While most of my week's gaming has been absolutely dominated by the monstrous (length-wise) Persona 3, I've finally caved and purchased a PSP what with the advent of the new Slim & Lites coming out. The three games I've picked up so far are somewhat diverse, though I've only really dived deep into one of them in my morning/evening commutes.

Jeanne d'Arc came out relatively recently and, along with Brave Story and the upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics remake, was the catalyst for the PSP purchase. I've always been a fan of Level 5's games, though I've yet to actually complete one or be drawn into its story. Dragon Quest VIII was a game with unparalleled visual and aural appeal and entertaining gameplay, but I never really dug into the storyline and as a result moved on to other things rather than complete it. Rogue Galaxy was also along those lines, since it came out amidst a wave of hype for FFXII and my enthusiasm to approach it was dulled by a coworker explicitly naming its faults (similar to DQ8's).

And so here we are with Jeanne d'Arc, a game that is neither turn-based RPG or action RPG, but in the third major category: strategy. It also follows a familiar tale of a young woman with the ability to hear the voice of god and the quest she embarks on before a tragic end. For the benefit of a deep game however, many liberties were taken and the world of old France and England has been transformed into a fantasy mythos with a mixture of typical and obscure elements.

One early reveal that eased my initial worries about the story was that the magical bracer that Jeanne obtains early in her journey is not in fact connected to the celestial voice. At least, the second character met in the journey with the ability to transform using his own bracelet is unable to hear the voice. Otherwise, I would suddenly have hilarious mental images of medieval Power Rangers transforming and reporting to a Zordon-esque god.

So, as a relief, I'm actually digging into the storyline. Also, as per Level 5's history, the gameplay and visuals are rock solid. The graphic style is crisp and very well suited to the PSP's display and resolution. The sound effects also are very crisp and effective, but I unfortunately can't say the same for the soundtrack. I've never been a big fan of Level 5's in-house composers, and this game isn't an exception along those lines. The developer greatly profited from Sugiyama's presence in DQ8, but sadly Takeshi Inoue's tracks don't live up to my standards for SRPGs... which is perhaps a bit unfair considering that most of my favorite ones were written by Hitoshi Sakimoto, one of the better composers in the industry today. In any case, the music isn't unbearable by any means. It just isn't memorable at all, and lacks any substantial dynamic range.

Overall, however, I'm very much enjoying this game and will continue to put in sessions on the bus rides to and from work every day.

The second of three PSP games I purchased initially is something I hadn't planned on getting, but there it was at Best Buy's $10 rack at the check out... And I couldn't resist it. The game is Gunpey, and unlike Jeanne above it does make use of the full dynamic range quite deliciously. I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but I'm really digging this musically inclined puzzle game. I never really got into Lumines much, because I'm not nearly as good at block-dropping puzzlers, but I love the Panel de Pon style games like that, Meteos, and coincidently this. The concept is neat in that you're trying to connect lines rather than colors or shapes... It's interesting to think, randomly, how much different this game would be on DS with touch input (yeah I'm aware that a version of Gunpey came out for the system), but I think what makes up for it is the delicious soundtrack.

The soundtrack's interactivity didn't quite hit me until the 3rd level, but when it did I got hit hard. Level three, in particular, is one of the coolest levels I've played through in this type of game. The way the music and sound effects merged together was seamless rather than awkward, and it actually sounds like you're putting together some music while playing the game. It really encourages me to keep on going and see what other levels have in store. Definitely another to keep plugging away at.

Unfortunately, the third title Brave Story hasn't been touched due to a total lack of time. Once I finish Jeanne d'Arc, I'll get to it though. Likewise for my backlog of console games. I'll finally get to Bioshock and doing it properly as soon as I reach the conclusions of Persona 3 and Metroid Prime 3. All in good time...

As a final note, I'm going to be saving my weekly music for a little later in the week, as it's getting a bit late here and what I've been listening to needs a bit more time to digest before I can really give a proper opinion on it. 'Till then, keep rockin'.

New WIP + Pre-TGS Microconf

Since I didn't get around to writing a normal entry this past weekend, I figure I'd make up for it with dual entry focused on two absolutely unrelated subjects: A sneak peak at a new piece I'm working on, as well as some of my initial reactions to tonight's pre-TGS Microsoft press conference.

Forest Fall (Tentative) Work In Progress

This piece is, essentially, the middle section of a longer work that I'm composing in collaboration with a local Seattle choreographer Karen Brown. I've worked with her several times, as she was a fellow Cornish graduate, and it's always a pleasure to join forces. I wanted to take a bit of a step away from previous things I've done and seek out something different, and ended up with the 3 minutes here thus far. Enjoy!

Download (4.3 MB)

Pre-TGS Microconf

Just some brief snippets of impressions of the big reveals/re-reveals here, mainly.

~ Rez & Ikaruga coming to XBLA - Awesome to the max! If I had a 360. I'll rectify that eventually, but as of now I'm obviously overloaded.

~ Ninja Gaiden 2 - Microsoft publishing is a surprise, but not unexpected. Probably insurance to keep Ryu on their platform. Game looks graphically nice from the released screens, but I'm somewhat iffy on the direction it's going. It's like Ryu somehow fused with Wolverine and Kratos to be some sort of crazy vengeanceja rather than a ninja. Of course the NG games never were very ninjaly in the first place. If anything, props on getting some uh, realistic looking blood and gore goin on.

~ Infinite Undiscovery - Can anyone explain the title yet? Reports of "choppy" battles in the trailer are unnerving, but it's early and I'm sure they just wanted to show something. World seems generic fantasy, with talks of fighting fire breathing dragons. Oooh, edgy. Again, I'll need to see more to get the full picture. Some screenshots are out, and look decent. I like the character designs, not as much on the environment designs yet.

~ Last Remnant - Somewhat amusing that their ending note is a deliberately multi-platform game when they're trying to sell the 360 to the waning Japanese audience. Either way, sounds a bit generic as well. Demons kidnapping sisters and all. Another wait and see title. The stuff they showed previously looked pretty nice though.

With a lack of big news from awaited heavy-hitters Konami, Capcom or Atlus... I wonder what will be unveiled next week at TGS's real opening. I've got my fingers crossed for a PS3 MegaTen game, mainly because I'm so engrossed in P3 right now. We'll see!

That Old School Feeling

Freeform: Sounds like a video game?

It may be my jaded upbringing on Japanese console games talking, but I have a theory: Western game developers are afraid of their games being identified as games. Now I don't mean that they're consciously shivering in their corner telling the bad pixels to go away, but judging from the latest slew of games one can recognize this trend and how it's developed alongside technology.

The emergence of games as a cinematic experience and the lust for interactive movies stemmed from the early days of SEGA CD schlock and the beginning of CD-based games on PC. Pre-rendered video and redbook audio began the technological explosion that eventually led to where we are today.

All of this leads into the audio-centric portion of what I've been setting up. In the drive for interactive film, the Western game developer has no more need for the video game composer. This was extremely apparent to me at my semi-recent visit to the Game Developers Conference back in March. While there was much discussion about technology and interactivity with audio stems and other things only possible in games, everything related to the creative side of music composition was based around one mantra: Diversity is dead, conform to the Hollywood sound.

Okay, I over exaggerated that last part, but it couldn't be helped as I heard the efforts of both newcomers wanting to show their stuff as well as the showcases of industry big-names. To be honest, I don't place much fault on the composers themselves. Rather, it all boils down to what kinds of games are being created and what they call for in their presence. With games becoming the interactive cinema that they are, equally cinematic approaches tend to be the easy fallback way to score them. As a bit of an anecdote, I found myself writing up a demo for a recent horror-themed game last year. As a treatment of a main theme, I did something more akin to a Castlevania tune. It came as no surprise that the developers decided to side with a more gritty and typically "horror" sound, filled with guitars and no recognizable theme. Fine by me, really. All the better to get scared by, and no bitterness on my end.

But there's the catch. What was this horror game modeled after? A horror movie. Yet you take something like Silent Hill, which has a very cleverly designed sound that is distinctive as a game soundtrack, and its movie models the soundtrack after the game... Which leads to the movie feeling like a game, turning off audiences and getting poor reviews. The things we do for authenticity.

All tangents aside, I tend to listen exclusively to Japanese game soundtracks. One reason is obvious in that they always release a soundtrack for a game. The other reason is because they're so clearly game soundtracks and are intentionally written with the aim to be listened to over and over again. One of the big reasons why Western game composers are so obsessive with interactivity in their scores is that film music is linear, has a beginning and an end, and is intended to be heard once in the course of a 2 hour film.

Game music is cyclical. A good track written for a game is like a good piece of African music. (As obscure as that may sound.) The whole basis of African music comes from the concept of taking a "loop", developing it, riffing off it, and coming around to the same thing over and over and over. Yet it never gets old, it doesn't need to end. It can continue going until the sun sets and the dancers get tired.

Game music is also distinctly memorable. Partly because of its cyclical nature, and also because of its strong melodic importance. Strong melodies repeating endlessly. In the push for cinematic experiences, we now have games that play a main melody once in the course of a gameplay session. Usually on the main title screen. Any recent game player can probably hum you a strain from the menu music of Halo, but I highly doubt anyone would be able to recite a track from the in-game score.

In the end, since this ramble is drawing on a bit long, I don't really have some big thesis about my stance on all of this. A lot of it is observation, and noticing the trend that game music takes in its progression alongside technology. I can only hope for a meeting point between the two dire opposites of cinematic and game music. They both have their advantages and disadvantages when it comes to modern games, but the diversity can also be a positive one.

Weekly Music: A Deluge of Audio

In the wake of last week's strictly game-oriented entry, I'm going to forego my usual Weekly Gaming section in favor of a longer one focused on Music. Mainly because there were so many new releases and older albums that I got around to checking out. (Another reason would be that I'm still playing through most of the games I mentioned last week, with the slight addition of Warhawk in little bursts.)

Burn my Dread -Reincarnation Persona 3-

I should mention, since I didn't talk about the P3 soundtrack before this blog started up, that I'm a huge fan of what Shoji Meguro created for the latest entry in the Persona series. While Atlus composer Kenichi Tsuchiya has headed up the previous Persona games, Meguro came from his involvement with previous MegaTen projects including the original Persona, Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga along with the Trauma Center series to create this very unique soundtrack. So after playing the game for around 20 hours so far, I was really pleased to hear an arranged album complete with the full version of opening theme "Burn my Dread". The whole CD gives more of an alternative take on the game's tracks, since they aren't remixed or arranged by anyone other than the original composer. I'll definitely find myself revisiting this CD often as a good compilation of P3 tracks without having to skip some of the down-tempo tracks for casual listening.

Growlanser VI OST

While Shoji Meguro was busy staging his Persona coup, Kenichi Tsuchiya lent his efforts to this somewhat generic soundtrack. He wasn't the only composer, as other Atlus in-housers lent their talents to it: Eisuke Seki and Atsushi Kitajoh, whom I can't exactly say I'm familiar with at all. As a whole, the soundtrack isn't very memorable to my ears, but it has some strong themes sprinkled throughout. Such as "Submerged in Darkness", which has a good combination of tinkling bells, bass synth and bongos that remind me a lot of Mitsuda's "Shevat" theme from Xenogears. It's all very midi orchestral for the rest however, reminiscent of some PSX RPGs like Brave Fencer Musashi. It's also rather short, just spanning one disc and 23 tracks. What mainly killed the soundtrack for me was the total lack of quality in synths used, lacking any sort of dynamic range other than extreme mids for the most part. While it picks up towards the end, I probably won't be going back for another listen.

Dragon Quest Swords ~ The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors

As with any Dragon Quest game, its identity is extremely apparent from the onset with Koichi Sugiyama's "Overture" blasting away with its classically orchestral fanfare. While only certain themes of his are used (the usual mainstays), Manami Matsumae returns from the shadows of freelancing to write the majority of the soundtrack. If you're familiar with Mega Man 1 and 2, you know her music. She contributed to both titles under the nicknames Yuukichan's Papa and Manami Ietel. The resulting soundtrack is one that's clearly classically inspired and tries to remain within the sound that Sugiyama has established for the series, featuring some absolutely beautiful trumpet melodies (especially in the track "Come on, let's be off!"). While it's somewhat disappointing that a lot of it tries to hold (and succeeds) to the DQ sound, there are some tracks that break free of the formula briefly to catch my attention with their creativity. One such track is "Time of Mirror", which features sweeping synths similar to the infamous THX intro forming into chords periodically throughout the piece. "The Spiral Staircase" also has a very cool sound to it that reminds distinctively of Masashi Hamauzu's combination of piano and breathy synth pads. Overall, I think the soundtrack is a bit short (just 1 CD at 27 tracks), but it probably suits the length of this DQ side-game rather nicely. Matsumae has definitely proven that she can still contribute to the industry that's changed so much since her original offerings.

Minna no Golf 5

There's a lot of sub-genres within game soundtracks. One that always surprises and amuses me is: golf games. I have no idea why, but if I were to hear this soundtrack without an introduction, I would know right off the bat that it's the soundtrack for a golf game. There's just something about it, though I can't put my finger on it exactly. (A likely answer is that this composer does them all, but that may be too easy.) The game definitely caught my ear from the get-go with its awesome Stomp-inspired opening theme by Junji Kamatsuka comprised almost exclusively of sound effects from the game. The rest of it is written by Gon Ohtsuji who has been the Hot Shots composer for years, lending that sort of casual every-day feel to the games that sets the mood perfectly. I never thought I'd be praising a golf soundtrack, but it's diverse and is just fun to listen to.

Subarashi Kono Sekai (It's a Wonderful World)

I was extremely disappointed by this soundtrack. It's Takeharu Ishimoto's first major emergence from the job of synthesizer programmer and into the field of composition. His origins are from programming the outstanding soundtracks for Legend of Mana and Vagrant Story back in '99 and '00 respectively, but then went on to completely screw up Kingdom Hearts II's otherwise great soundtrack with some of the worst synth programming I've heard in a AAA RPG. Likewise, he comes into this project with some of the worst use of canned samples, trying to go for a hip from-the-streets sound that ultimately sounds like a teenage kid playing with Acid instead of doing his homework. If that's what he was going for, great job, but I don't think that's the case. There's also a handful of licensed Japanese electronica and hip-hop artists peppering the soundtrack that make it almost bearable, but for the most part it's actually pretty bad music compared to the better stuff out there. When you boil it down, it just sounds like a poor attempt to capture the spirit of Jet Set Radio's style of soundtrack without living up to it. Considering that he's being credited as writing for upcoming games FFVII: Crisis Core, Final Fantasy Agito XIII, and Final Fantasy Dissida, I fear for the integrity of the Final Fantasy name in regards to its musical quality. Hopefully they'll be much better than this.

King of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation "A"

Toshikazu Tanaka has been pretty much a mainstay of solid SNK game soundtracks for so long, that it's not really necessary to mention that this game's music rocks. However, I'll mention it anyway. The soundtrack plays out a whole lot like an "electronica around the world" collection, with inspirations taken from Japanese, Indian, European, Eastern European, Native American, and Chinese traditional music. (Hey, like Street Fighter II!) Unlike Subarashi, this is how you handle samples well. There's some heavy usage of library samples and live recordings that all fuse together with the music well and create something that you can groove to rather than cringe at the stereotypical qualities of the tracks. It also contains one of the most hilarious song titles ever: "Giving a Manicure to the Fingernails of Darkness". Seriously, how can you beat that?

Phew! That's enough out of me for this week. 'Till next time!